


Quoth the Raven

by AmosLee1023



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Bullying, Dark, Dark Fantasy, Deal with a Devil, Evil, F/M, Gay Sex, Heterosexual Sex, High School, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Horror, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Horror, Recreational Drug Use, Teenagers, Work In Progress, i suck ass at tagging, the straight is only for the beginning plot, this is more gay than straight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-11-07 22:02:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmosLee1023/pseuds/AmosLee1023
Summary: "What do you want," Tommy asked, looking at the shadow with his eyes, watching it as it paused to a stop in front of him, its large black beak turning slightly to the side.Its beak opened only a crack, and human screaming of men and women, children and infants, leaked out. Screaming, and sobbing, and maniacal laughing that all filled Tommy's ears with a rotten, disgusting feeling, and replacing the ticking of Toni's clock- loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood, yet only wrecking havoc upon Tommy.Then, like a ghost, a whisper right into Tommy's ear, quiet enough to barely be heard, yet strong enough to drown out the horror that leaked out of the Raven's mouth."Kind James is a fake," the Raven whispered into his ear, while standing in front of him, drawing out sounds of bloody murder.James Parker, the only thing that Tommy actually lived to destroy.Tommy Fish, a guy with a talent for relentless bullying and hatred, gets help from the devil to bully his favorite kid, indefinitely.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd, for the sole purpose of: I had written it once and the file became corrupted, so I finally managed the motivation to rewrite it, but not to reread it. If there are grammar mistakes, please let me know.
> 
> WARNING: This has BULLYING, SEXUAL CONTENT (both mxm and fxm), and HOMOPHOBIA/HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE.
> 
> It's a very dark story inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's _The Raven_ , that made me want a really dark, gothic yet psychological, story.
> 
> (It may miss some of the psychological/gothic parts, because I had to rewrite it after the original copy became corrupted- three times. So, the motivation is still here but waned some.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction into a bully's personal life.

**Chapter One**

  


  


Tommy Fish lay wide awake in bed, staring blankly at his bedroom door with eyes that pleaded for sleep of which they couldn’t achieve. Sleep, he needed to sleep. He had been kept up from nine last night to what was five thirty in the morning now, all because of the raven that tapped its beak against the window behind him. Only an hour of sleep.

It was persistent, its loud tapping of the rattling glass the only sound in the whole house aside from Toni’s wall clock clicking once every second through the thin walls of the home.

The bedroom was dark, but his eyes were well adjusted to the darkness, his brown eyes catching every little crack in the door across from him. To add to his sight was the sun, gradually rising over the horizon into his window, making it so that he could see every detail of his bedroom, and also allowing him the knowledge that he had school today at seven..

He should be done with high school by now, graduated and- though not in college, going about his own life. College was for pussies with money, but he hadn’t actually decided what to do when he graduated this time around. Work. Live. Live. That’s all life was, was living.

So, nineteen verging on twenty years old, Tommy had been held back twice in elementary school: once for his attitude of skipping classes and bullying, and the other for just as much. He knew he was supposed to do better. He didn’t care to do better.

 _Tap, tap, tap_.

He ignored the raven, staring blankly at the door, his back to its persistent face. It wanted in, and he didn’t care to let it. He was tired from work yesterday, laying in his clothes from the day before because he had been too exhausted to change, and now even more exhausted because of the damn bird.

 _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap_.

He didn’t know how Toni and their mom could sleep through it. It was louder than Toni’s clock, rocking his brain, pounding against his eardrums.

Tapping for eight hours. Keeping him awake through the night for eight hours.

“What,” he finally asked, quiet and under his breath, because he didn’t actually care to know; he just wanted it to stop.

 _Tap, tap-_.

Quiet. Silence, aside from the clock.

Tommy finally shut his burning eyes, long enough for two clicks of Toni’s clock to pass, before a cold breeze suddenly crept up his back. It made him open his eyes again, half lidded and emotionless, just to see that the sun had disappeared from his room. It was dark, darker than it had been- dark like the night that he had stayed up through. And slowly, the coldness on his back traveled down his body, and across the bed to the foot of it, of where when he looked down at himself with only his eyes, he could see a giant black shadow gliding around the bed to his front, bringing the coldness with it.

The Raven’s human form. As human as it could make itself; a giant fuzzy, black shadow that hurt the back of Tommy’s eyes to look at, with human hands pale as paper at its sides; pitch black fingernails that stretched down its fingers into sharp, deadly points.

It did that. It would pester and pester until Tommy gave in and let it come inside, of which it would turn into this… thing, so that it could speak to its murderer, Tommy.

Murderer.

Weeks ago, this raven had been sitting over Tommy’s house, watching him day by day, and never leaving, only annoying. He would come home to see it perched on the porch’s roof, staring at him with its beady, red eyes, and drawing an emotion out of him like: pure hatred. He didn’t know why and didn’t care why. Looking at the raven made him feel the utmost ugliest, angriest hatred he ever had, and one day, he finally put a ladder to the side of the house and climbed up to do the only thing ever present in his mind: kill it. He grabbed it by its squawking head and rung its neck, squeezing until its vertebrates snapped out of place and severed its spinal cord, killing its brain from its body.

Then, he stuffed it into a potato sack and set it on fire on James’ front porch. Only, to his disdain, it appeared at Tommy’s bedroom window one week later, and the harassment began.

“What do you want,” Tommy asked, looking at the shadow with his eyes, watching it as it paused to a stop in front of him, its large black beak turning slightly to the side.

Its beak opened only a crack, and human screaming of men and women, children and infants, leaked out. Screaming, and sobbing, and maniacal laughing that all filled Tommy’s ears with a rotten, disgusting feeling, and replacing the ticking of Toni’s clock- loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood, yet only wrecking havoc upon Tommy.

Then, like a ghost, a whisper right into Tommy’s ear, quiet enough to barely be heard, yet strong enough to drown out the horror that leaked out of the Raven’s mouth.

“Kind James is a fake,” the Raven whispered into his ear, while standing in front of him, drawing out sounds of bloody murder.

James Parker, the only thing that Tommy actually lived to destroy. A seventeen year old senior of whom he shared classes, a nice guy to everyone, who got good grades, and didn’t disappoint, who Tommy gave months of attention to bully. And, all of it was a giant, tooth achingly sweet lie, as the Raven had led Tommy to understand.

Every time it came to his window, it had something to say about James, and Tommy didn’t know or want to know how.

_James fakes his grades._

_A slut._

_Depressed._

_Liar._

_Faggot._

_Thief._

Murderer, as the Raven told Tommy this time. It whispered in his ear, in the softest yet most evil voice, “His friend drank too much, ate too much, fell asleep at his feet. Wanted help but didn’t receive, not by James Parker; he stood and watched the vomit slip through their teeth. Didn’t call for help, didn’t call for help until their body never felt.”

Tommy stared at the raven’s black, blurry form. “What does that mean?” he asked, because it always spoke so weird that he sometimes spent days trying to figure out what secret it had spilled.

The raven’s body started shaking, trembling, like it were in the midst of a slow, oncoming seizure. “James had a friend ask for help,” it whispered calmly into Tommy’s ear, “But not the help of surviving, for the help of depriving.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Quothe the Raven,” it said, and Tommy could feel its voice drag across his skin. And, as if he had blinked, the room was suddenly brightened again, with the sun shining fully through his window, and the bitter coldness of the raven’s shadow gone. So was the bird.

Tommy could hear doors opening and closing outside of his room, and a quick knocking took to his door.

_Tap tap tap_

“What,” he said again, and Toni’s muffled voice sounded from the other side of his bedroom door.

“Are you awake? It’s six forty.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, making sure,” Toni said and then, silence as she left. Tommy lay in bed for what felt like five minutes but wasn’t even one, before sitting up from the mattress and stripping off his shirt, because people only ever noticed the same T-shirts.

He grabbed another off of his messy bed and walked out of his room, to the bathroom, that was locked. He knocked on it.

“Yeah,” Toni sounded from inside, brushing her teeth by the sound of it.

“I gotta piss.”

The lock clicked and Tommy pushed the door open, the wooden frame hitting Toni in the elbow and causing her to look at him through the mirror, of which he gave an effortless apology and walked over to the toilet.

“I’m peeing, don’t look,” he said, snapping open the button of his jeans and sliding down his fly, hearing Toni spit into the sink from behind him.

“’Kay.” The girl smiled into the mirror, looking at her well-cared for teeth, and then deciding that they’d look better with makeup, so she opened up a drawer to the sink and fished out their mom’s makeup that she rarely ever wore. “Hey Tommy, I got an A in my Forensics class,” she said, and Tommy tilted his head towards her in acknowledgment.

“Yeah? What for?” he asked.

“What for? For good grades,” Toni spoke over his pissing, “Ms. Shaw likes me, and I like her work. We’re doing fingerprinting, but my partner is missing like, half of his finger prints because… I don’t know, hard labor?”

Tommy laughed under his breath and shook himself off. “What, you gotta take his prints or some shit?”

“Yep. And, Ms. Shaw’s car got broken into the other day, so we get to dust it. It’s really cool.” Toni smacked her red lips. “Or at least, the dusting, not that her car got robbed.”

“Hey, little girl, you’re starting to sound like a lesbo with a hit for the milf, calm it down a little.”

Toni laughed and looked back at her brother, who zipped his jeans back up. “Shut up! Ugh, you’re such a douche bag,” she said, though she smiled through it. Tommy broke a smile and sauntered up to his sister, slipping his shirt on and squeezing in beside her to start brushing his own teeth.

He knew that everything she said about him was fake, because as much as an asshole who deserved to be put in acid that he was, they were still siblings. He watched over her like a bat from hell. With their dad gone and mom working, he had to look over her. And, she was his full-blooded sister. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about their three older half siblings. The one he did care about, Zach, was gone. Fern, Lara, and Regina were Satan’s bitches.

So, Toni was his little angel sister, who he actually felt bad for because here she is, a pretty little thing with friends and a high ride to college, with a rotten cargo named Tommy. The rumors about him, he didn’t care about. He didn’t care about the rumors, or the rotten truths, or the dirty looks from teachers. He cared about the toll it had on Toni.

“Mom’s gonna drive us to school,” Toni said, and Tommy glanced at her in the mirror, layering makeup that she didn’t need to.

“Whafafu-”

“Spit, nasty.”

Tommy spat into the sink. “What about work?”

“Work? I don’t know, she said she’s going later. I’m gonna change, I don’t like this top.”

“Fucking bitch ass- why are girls always buying clothes they don’t like?”

Toni laughed again and slid out of the bathroom. “Why don’t guys _buy_ clothes?” She shut the door behind her and Tommy rolled his eyes and finished his teeth. When he was done, he left downstairs to the living room, where their mom Dustin sat on the couch, with a bunch of papers in front of her and her phone in her hand.

“What are you doing?” Tommy asked, and his mom looked at him, more feminine than her name, that he had no clue where she got from. The woman looked at her phone again, at the time, and sighed, sitting back in the sofa.

“Trying to get the insurance done before school, but that’s not gonna happen.”

“Car insurance?”

“No, health. Toni’s wisdom teeth are coming in, and she’s still seventeen. I can’t do anything for you though, sorry.”

Tommy shrugged, because he didn’t care about doctors, or dentists. If it came to Toni, he did. “So she’s gonna be eating applesauce and granny shit for a week?”

“You’re funny, but watch your mouth. You don’t need anymore trouble at school.”

Tommy was going to say fuck school, but Toni came downstairs announcing that she was ready, and that meant that it was time to go.

“See you guys after school,” Dustin said, parking in front of the school building, where kids ran to their classes because there were only three minutes until the second bell. One kid tripped and landed on his chin.

“Alright, bye Mom, love you,” Toni said and hugged their mom from behind, sitting in the back seat, before getting out of the car. Dustin looked at Tommy and reached up to pinch his chin the lightest it had ever been.

“See you after school. Don’t get into trouble.”

“Sure.” Tommy climbed out after Toni and the two started walking towards the school building, Tommy holding the door open for his sister to let her inside of the cold hallway. Their first class was in the same direction, but Tommy steered a hard right and Toni hummed.

“What are you doing?” she asked skeptically, pausing in her step, but Tommy didn’t even look back at her.

“I’m starving.” He was. Being awake for more than eight hours now, and his stomach was empty.

“You’re gonna be late to class, Tommy.”

“You are, if you stand there. I’ll be quick,” the brunette called back, walking towards the cafeteria where there was a chick who sold snacks all school day. He could hear Toni sigh, but he kept going to the cafeteria because he was already on his way. When he got there, two hallways down from class, he wasn’t the only one hungry.

James Parker stood in front of the shop window, smiling at her like they were conversing, and holding his wallet in his hand. How was Tommy so lucky. He walked up to James and put an arm around the noirette’s shoulders, making the smile turn to confusion as the younger teenager wondered who was there. Though, the emotion was short-lived. As soon as James looked at Tommy, his expression fell into what Tommy adored.

Fear. Oh, sweet fear.

“Hey James, what you up to this morning?”

“N… Nothing,” James said, and looked back at the shop window when the older woman handed him a cup of ramen; water filled to the line at the top, he only needed to microwave it and take it to class to eat. Tommy looked at the cup and brought his other hand to grab and play with Jame’s stomach.

“Nothing? You’re eating fake food man; come on, what about that diet? You’re gonna get so fat the soccer team’s gonna mistake you for a soccer ball,” Tommy said with a smile, because smiling made it look like harmless banter, and the woman laughed a little herself before telling James the price for the ramen. The noirette watched Tommy for a second before giving the woman his attention and opening his wallet to give her a dollar bill. She took it and put it into her change box, and while her gaze was elsewhere, Tommy leaned in to James’s ear, bringing his hand from his stomach to his crotch. “Your fly’s down,” he said, grabbing the zipper and pulling it up, and James’s face got so beat red that Tommy could see the sweat bead on his forehead. The noirette took the ramen and ducked out of Tommy’s grip to hurry off, and Tommy held his smile, turning to the woman to buy his own snack.

James wasn’t fat, but he did have a little weight on him that Tommy- _“Cuts and cuts, if only his lard”-_ used to his advantage. He was chubby, with blonde hair dyed black; Tommy could tell without the Raven, because of his lighter eyebrows and eyelashes; and freckles that littered his face. Light, but nothing slipped by Tommy.

In school, James always smiled. He always smiled, and laughed, and helped people with their schoolwork, and played the violin, and and and- he was the perfect student. The “and”s never stopped. And that’s why Tommy hated him. Why he wanted to _break_ him. Tommy wanted everyone to see the side of James that he saw: red-faced and embarrassed, shy and awkward, depressed and ashamed. He wanted everyone to know what he _knew_. That James was a faggot, who just got out of a relationship with a guy in his twenties. That he liked to steal whatever he could from drugstores and the mall, and that he cheated for all of his good grades. He wanted everyone to see that James was a _fake_.

“’Might get expelled,” Stuart said through a puff of cigarette smoke, and Tommy looked at him from where he leaned against the side brick wall of Circle K; just across from the school, everyone crowded it to smoke or scream or fight during lunch. There was a crowd of obnoxious sophomores to their right, laughing and jumping on eachothers’ backs, trying to draw attention to themselves.

“What the fuck for?” Tommy asked.

“Mr. Graff caught him and fatass Michelle doing it in the art room,” Evelyn answered and stole the cigarette away from Stuart, who scoffed.

“Where the hell did you hear that?” he asked.

“Michelle.”

“Fucking bitch- we weren’t doing anything, she was jerking me off.”

Tommy laughed. “Man, you know where her hands have been?”

“Fuck you Tommy, like you get any good ass.”

“Like hell I do.” Tommy leaned over to Evelyn and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her to him and getting smoke blown into his face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and looked at Stuart.

“Are you saying I’m not fine ass?”

Stuart glared through a pink face. “You fuck everyone, _Evelyn_.”

“Yeah, with good fucking dick. You’re all for the girls,” Evelyn spat at him and turned her attention back to Tommy, kissing his exposed neck of a summer T-shirt, though he wasn’t particularly in the mood with the sophomores and nudged her away.

Stuart was an idiot on the verge of jail time from his taste of women. He liked younger girls, fifteen, sixteen, he said he liked how shy they were, or their boobs. And the jail time was surfacing because of a video that he had filmed of fucking a fifteen year old that he leaked to his other fucked up friends. Tommy wasn’t into any of it and had Stuart blocked on social media for ages, but this time he was glad, because someone had ratted and now all of the guys with the video were being watched.

Tommy was Stuart’s friend, but he was utterly disgusted with him. So was Evelyn, though she and Stuart had a feud riding on deadly if Tommy weren’t there to stop it.

And, Tommy had had enough of Stuart checking out the sophomore girls, and pushed off of the wall. “Come on,” he said, “I’m sick of this place.”

Stuart scoffed. “Go on, I’m gonna get some chips.”

“You’re coming too, dipshit,” Evelyn said and grabbed Stuart by the arm, but he pulled away and she shoved him. Before he could do anything to her in return, Tommy pushed him forward to start walking.

“Knock it off, asshole.”

“You guys are both dicks, always fucking ganging up on me.”

“Wouldn’t have to if you had any kind of brains.”

“I’m gonna fucking beat the shit out of you one day,” Stuart said and Tommy looked at him as they approached the road.

“You’re gonna beat me up?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Tommy watched him for a second before smiling and shaking his head, and breaking off to run across the street as cars whizzed by for lunch hour. His friends followed him and they walked on the grass, making their way to the main school building. Though, it looked like Tommy had lucked out again. James Parker walked with two girls, some younger teens that he chose to hang out with, one of whom Tommy knew was a bitch, and the other just a normal dumb teen.

This time, James saw Tommy before he could get the upper hand, and Tommy saw the way the noirette said something to his friends, through a smile, before turning to part ways with them. So, he elbowed Stuart for his attention and ran up the yard to James, of whom he caught by throwing an arm around his shoulders again.

“Hey, Jamie! Whatcha up to? Skip lunch?” he asked, and the bitch, Edie, gave him a sideways glance.

“What are you doing? Get off him,” she said, even moving forward to grab Tommy’s arm, but Stuart’s fucked up self stepped in between, giving her a smile that was far from friendly. The other girl, Diana, kept her mouth shut.

“Come on James, I asked what you’re up to.”

“The library,” James said, but he didn’t look at Tommy. Evelyn hummed and crossed her arms.

“Library’s across campus. I think you were just trying to find us and hang, huh?” she asked, though she wasn’t looking for an answer.

“Leave him alone, you guys, don’t you have anything better to do?” Edie sounded, and Stuart laughed, keeping her at bay.

“What you got in mind?”

“Knock it off, Stuart,” Tommy put in, looking down at James, who tried wiggling out of his grasp. He only tightened it further, bringing his other hand up to play with his dark dyed locks. “Alright, I wanna play a game, you guys wanna play a game?” he asked, though he only looked at Evelyn. The dark haired girl shrugged with a side smile and looked at Stuart, winking and nodding towards Tommy and James when he caught her gaze. He pushed Edie back by her chest, making her stumble backwards while keeping her footing, and then started walking off from the group.

“Sure, we’ll play,” Ev said, and Tommy smiled to James, who still didn’t find his gaze.

“Alright James, monkey in the middle.” The brunette let James go to put a hand on the back of his head and thrust him down forward, so that he could grab the younger teenager’s shirt from the bottom hem and strip it off of his body. As soon as it was off, James tried to grab for it back, face beat red, but Tommy chunked it across the grass to Stuart. When James didn’t move, Tommy nudged him. “Go on, get it, lard-ass.”

“Leave him the fuck alone!” Edie cried out bitterly, though James was forced to give in and headed to Stuart to get it, having to run when Stuart took off into a giant circle around the group. Tommy looked at Edie and Diane and shook his head in annoyance.

“Fuck off, don’t you got study group or something?”

“No, fuck you- you can’t-”

“Edie, stop it,” Diane said and grabbed Edie’s arm, shutting her friend up before Evelyn’s mean ass could make them cry. Ev, raised a hand up for Stuart, and he threw the shirt to her. Tommy caught it first and toyed with James for a minute, holding it up over his head in a thin, muscular arm of leather bracelets and a chain, making the chubby teen look utterly pathetic in his khaki shorts and jiggling torso as he jumped for the clothing.

“Reach, reach, fatass, you’re never gonna get it with that body.”

Edie jumped out to try and snatch it, but Stuart grabbed her from behind and swung her around, making her cry out angrily. It made Tommy look back at his friend in disgust. He tossed the shirt to Evelyn, who took off running with James behind her, his body shiny with a sheen of sweat from both the exercise and the heat of the embarrassment. Tommy walked around Stuart to pinch his neck, giving a quick whisper for him to knock it off again, in his ear. The redhead glanced at him before scoffing and letting Edie go. He looked like he was going to say something bitter to Tommy, but James’s shirt flew into view again and Tommy caught it before it hit him in the face. Looking beyond the clothing, he could see James approaching, but Stuart quickly stuck out his foot and tripped him, knocking the teen down flat onto his face.

It made Stuart and Tommy both burst out laughing, Evelyn giggling as she made her way over.

“Oh my god, the whole town just rumbled!” she cracked, making the laughter get louder. When James didn’t get up immediately, Edie and Diane came to his aid, helping him up to his feet and allowing the real damage to be seen, of blood leaking from his chin in what looked like a wound from a rock that he had probably fallen on. The laughter slowed to a stop and Tommy tossed the shirt to Evelyn, who tossed it to Diane. The young teen used it to put against James’s bleeding chin.

“Fuck man, you’re gonna get in trouble,” Stuart mumbled under his breath to Tommy, who looked at him sideways.

“Me? You fucking tripped him.”

“Tch, like I knew there was a fucking rock.”

“We’re going to the nurse,” Diane said, to James, and Edie looked back at the older teens to direct a, “And we’re telling the office!”

“Oh, yeah, do what you want, you fucking bitch,” Stuart said, kneeling down and picking up another rock to throw at her, but it was an intentional miss over her shoulder. The _whiz_ of it made James look over, and Tommy smiled crudely at him.

“Yeah, faggot, let your girls take care’a ya, make us the big bad monsters,” he said, hollering the last of it as Diane urged her friends away. Tommy spat after them and turned to look at Evelyn, but something behind her caught his attention like a body.

The raven, standing across the street on the sidewalk of Circle K, its blurry, black shadow of a body swirling over with such a static effect that it made Tommy want to pass out. Its hands shook uncontrollably at its sides, like a car passing by a white picket fence on the freeway. Blood leaked down from its big beak, black as the beak itself, down onto the concrete beneath it and into a thick, tar-like puddle.

l.l

James had enough sense in him to not tattle on Tommy and his friends, but the brunette still got stuck an hour in detention for sleeping in Government; though he couldn’t be blamed: it was a boring, pointless class that he constantly was in trouble for skipping, sleeping, or fighting in, because the other seniors were “so smart” and he just- snapped.

So, he had to walk home alone, on the empty streets of kids hanging at the beach or fucking. At least, that’s what he would do, if he weren’t so damn tired. He was luckier than fuck that he didn’t have work today, because he was ready to hop into bed and pass out.

Walking home, there were no birds perched on his house, something that always made him calmer. He hated stray animals. Hated them more than he hated James.

He walked into the house and smelled bacon immediately, and the smell drew him to the kitchen, where he saw Dustin at the stove, laying some pieces of raw bacon into a hot pan. The teen walked up to his mom and slipped passed, backing up to the counter and gripping the edge to hop up for a sit-down.

“Dinner?” he asked, and his mom looked at him with her eyes.

“BLTs. And I’m not happy.”

Tommy laughed. “What for?” he asked, watching as Dustin walked off to the sink to wash her hands. The bacon in the pan popped hot grease against Tommy’s bare arm as the strips cooked, shrinking as they were drained of their moisture.

“I get calls when you’re in trouble, Tommy. And I’m sick of ‘em.” Dustin turned the sink on, squirting her hands with some dish soap to start washing them. Tommy scoffed under his breath.

“Oh yeah, well hey, it ain’t like I try to-”

“No Tommy, you do try. You try real fucking hard to look like a badass at that damned school, and I’m sick of signing reports on your behavior,” Dustin said and shut the sink off, turning to look at her son with a bitter expression and shaking the water from her hands. Tommy knew better than to give her any rude remarks right now, watching her and feeling a few drips of water hit his skin. “I love you Tommy, and I always have, always will. But you gotta do something good with your life, because this ain’t it.” Dustin watched her son’s face for a minute before sighing and walking to the counter on the other side of the stove, away from her son. He watched her pick up a knife to start slicing a tomato, and sat silent for a while, listening to the bacon pop and sizzle.

After a while, he finally asked, “Where’s the little babe?”

“Toni went to the mall with some friends, ‘thought she’d told you.”

“No.”

A silence lingered in the air between the two, and after a while, Tommy slipped down from the counter top to flip the bacon for Dustin, who never looked at him, slicing the tomato into fine layers. “I’m gonna go and pass out,” he said, “So you can just wrap my sandwich for me.”

“Why?”

“Tired as fuck. I have work tomorrow.”

“On the weekend?” Dustin finally looked at her son, catching him crunching on a piece of bacon from the plate of cooked slices. He nodded, licking his lips and talking through the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, eleven to five.”

Dustin put her hands on the counter and looked more fully at her tall son. “I don’t like you working.”

Tommy laughed and gave his mom a funny look before shrugging her off when he noticed the expression in her gaze. “Come on Mom, you can’t expect me to lounge around like a fucking asshole, can you? You can barely afford the bills as it is. Toni’ll freak if her phone service goes out.”

“And that’s my problem. You outta be studying, hanging out with friends. You shouldn’t be looking like you stayed up all night.” Though, he had.

“Mom, it’s alright. I see my friends enough, I don’t need their faces staining my dreams.” Tommy put the cooking fork down and gave his mom a half smile to calm her down. “Alright, I’m gonna take a nap. See ya.”

Dustin put her knife down and stepped over to her son to put an arm around his broad shoulders. “Okay. Goodnight.” She was too short to kiss his cheek, so she kissed just below his jaw and pat his back once before turning back to the vegetables. Tommy left the kitchen after, turning to go upstairs and into his bedroom.

Down the hall were photos of he and Toni’s half-sisters, out of respect for their shared father, Quinn, because he was no longer there. He wasn’t, and neither was Zach: any photos of the two were stored away in Dustin’s closet. Zach was Dustin’s first son, from when she was sixteen. He’s be thirty one now, the same age as Quinn’s daughter, Lara. Lara, Regina, and Fern, were all in their thirties right now: results of Quinn’s also being a teen parent.

It sucked that Zach wasn’t on any of the walls, because he had been Tommy’s best friend. He was the cool kid, the one who wore a leather jacket and was still able to hang with the popular kids. His being gone took a toll, on everyone. Quinn had been gone twelve years too early to be affected, but even his asshole daughters were. Fern was thirty three and in and out of jail for identity theft, Lara was living out of town with her own life, and Regina was thirty, spending every minute she could on running marathons. They didn’t call, or stop by, or send letters. They just up and left Dustin to cope on her own, with sixteen year old, asshole Tommy.

That was three years ago, and Tommy only turned into more of a dick.

The teen went into his room and walked over his floor of scattered clothes and condom wrappers, and old cigarette ash followed by too many hot sauce packets from Taca Bell, to go and lay down on his bed of more scattered clothes.

He woke up to a dark room, not even knowing when exactly he had fallen asleep, but seeing on his clock that it was verging on nine p.m. He felt shitty from napping for so long, but he sat up in bed and climbed off of the mattress to leave his bedroom, dark from the night sky in the window. He followed Toni’s ticking wall clock to her room, so that he could open the door and look inside. Toni’s bedroom light was still on, but her bed was also still empty. He flicked the light off and reached into his pocket to get out his phone and call her.

“Hello?” Toni asked, picking up after some rings. Tommy headed downstairs so that he could go outside and smoke a cigarette, since the last time he did inside, Dustin almost lost her voice yelling at him.

“Don’t “hello” me, you fuck. Where are you?” He unlocked the front door and stepped out onto the porch, getting out his pack of cigarettes to slip one out and light.

“Well jeez, what’d you do, get yelled at?”

“Not yet. Where the hell are you at? See the fuckin’ time?”

“It’s only nine, Tommy.”

“Says the kid who’s been out since four. Get your ass home, Mom made BLT’s, and she’ll blow an aneurysm if you aren’t back.” He could hear her talking to some girls on the other side of the phone, and he dragged from his cigarette in wait.

“Okay, I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

“Bullshit, make it ten.”

“Tommy-”

“Fifteen or I’m fucking up your room.”

“Tommy, you asshole.” The phone call clicked off and Tommy looked at his phone’s screen before locking it and putting it away. He took a long drag from his cigarette before dropping it and stomping it out to start off away from the house.

It was stuffy out, with the summer air. The humidity clung to his skin like he’d jogged, and it was verging on the slight of uncomfortable, but that was summer for you. He kept on walking to the park, because it was just around the block, while the beach was a mile walk down west. He knew a girl lived on the other side of the park that he’d fucked a few times, and he didn’t have anything to do. Maybe she’d have some weed or booze. Preferably cold, because he was still a little drowsy.

He walked ten minutes to her house, a small little thing of which he knew which room was hers and could just walk up and knock, unlike the movies. He walked up to the house and knocked on her dark bedroom window, not really bothered if she was up or not.

A light came on in the bedroom and he saw a shadow walk up to the window before the curtains were peeked out through. A green eye with a red eyebrow, of which belonged to the girl named Madison. When she saw who it was, she drew open the curtains and unlocked her window to slide open.

“Hey,” she said, “You look tired.”

Tommy shrugged a shoulder. “Look it, don’t feel it. Did I wake you up?”

Madison smiled and shook her head. “No, I was on Instagram. You wanna come in?”

Tommy scoffed under his breath and leaned on the side of her house. “I don’t know, we gonna have a mix up like last time?” A mix up, involving Madison’s creaky, cheap ass bed waking up her dad and having Tommy have to beat off at the park. Madison laughed and ducked away from the window out of view.

“Okay, then do you just wanna smoke?” she giggled through the sound of a drawer opening. Tommy moved to lean on the window sill, peeking his head inside to watch her ass as she bent over. Her room smelled like a sweet perfume.

“Is fucking and smoking out of the question?” he asked, and Madison looked back at him, her long hair swaying.

“I thought-”

“What, you ain’t up for the outdoors?”

Madison twisted her lips before turning back to the little dresser. “Well, sure, but I’ll have to change.” Out of her very short pajama shorts and spaghetti strap tank-top. Which wouldn’t be a problem, but they were white, and that was the most visible thing in the dark.

“Here, I’ll pick for ya.” Tommy hoisted himself into her bedroom, knocking things off of the dresser in front of her dresser clumsily, and making the girl turn around to push him back outside by his head, laughing under her breath.

“Tommy, knock it off.”

“Well come on, don’t leave me hanging.”

Madison gave him a look through a big, amused smile, and tossed a bag of weed for him to catch before walking off to her closet and opening the door up.

“Mm, ‘my gonna get a show?”

“Tch, you wish.” The girl grabbed a black T-shirt to pull over her white tank, and slipped on a black skirt over her shorts before slipping them off to throw back into her closet. Then she toed on some sneakers and walked over to the window to climb out with Tommy’s help. As soon as she put her feet onto the grass, Tommy pushed her against the house, putting his face into her neck and breathing in her sweet scent. She let him kiss and suck on her neck for a minute before pushing him off of her so that she could look at him, her cheeks pink from the arousal and the nighttime humidity.

“Let’s get high first,” she suggested, and Tommy crinkled the bag in his hand. He sucked his teeth.

“Okay, got a pipe?”

“Um, no? What about you and your papers?”

Tommy groaned under his breath. “That shit’s expensive.”

“So are cigarettes,” Madison laughed, “But I smell them on you.”

“When don’t I smoke,” he muttered under his breath and leaned back inside of Madison’s bedroom window to grab a mechanical pencil from the dresser underneath the window frame. He slipped the grip off of it and tossed the pencil back inside before looking at Madison. “Got a fat ring or something?”

Madison rose an eyebrow at him before pulling a thick ring off of her finger that read “DAD”. She handed it to Tommy and he crammed it into one end of the pencil grip for a burner, and then he opened the baggy to start stuffing some weed into the other end.

“Alright, there ain’t no filter, so don’t choke,” he said. Madison shrugged, watching as Tommy put the “pipe” to his lips and pulled out his lighter to light it for a puff. He held the smoke in and handed the pipe to Madison before motioning towards the road, of which they started walking while she smoked. She suddenly coughed and Tommy laughed at her, a light airiness coming over him. “I said don’t fucking choke.”

“Fuck you, it shot down my throat.”

“Aw, poor babe.”

They walked for a bit, smoking until their legs and bodies felt funny, and Madison was giggling at everything. Tommy walked her to the park, where she lay on the merry-go-round and had him push her, making her so dizzy that she couldn’t even sit up when the ride had stopped. Tommy climbed onto the merry-go-round and leaned over her, looking at her bloodshot eyes that looked at him. She laughed at nothing and it made Tommy laugh, and he was too high to even notice when he asked, “Want me to fuck you here?”, so he asked again. Madison nodded while giggling.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” She brought rubbery hands up to wrap around Tommy’s neck, and he dropped down to kiss her, a sloppy kiss that she returned with another giggle while opening her legs as his waist came down lower to hers. He brought his mouth down to her neck to bite her flesh again, making her face heat up from the burn of it and the warmth from the outdoors. He licked the bite, giving a refreshing coolness to the flesh as the moisture dried, and sat up between Madison’s legs so that he could undo his jeans and pull himself out. He leaned over her again and flipped her skirt up, bringing a hand to grope at her pussy though her panties, of which he could feel were damp. He lay over her and kissed her again, the girl slipping her tongue into his mouth and moaning when his fingers pulled her panties to the side to rub her clit, her juices soaking his fingers and making a natural lubricant for her swollen clit to throb in burning pleasure, the girl breaking the kiss to pant hotly against Tommy’s face.

“You’re so fucking soaked,” he said, pushing his fingers into her pussy and thrusting them against the swollen, hot insides of her woman, making her flesh sticky with sweat as she moaned and whimpered, biting her lip and breathing heavily.

“Just fuck me,” she said, holding onto him around his shoulders. He kissed her again, pulling his fingers out of her pussy to grab his dick and stroke it, strengthening his throbbing boner and slicking it up with his wet fingers. He lowered his hips more and put his head against her pussy, rubbing it against her opening with deep breathing through his nose, before pushing it inside, groaning as he entered her slick, tight walls.

Madison gasped and moaned loudly when he started moving his hips, thrusting his cock in and out of her pussy with light squelching sounds from the wetness of her arousal. “Oh, fuck,” she moaned loudly, and Tommy hushed her to be quiet, dropping his head and sighing at the friction. He fucked her for a little longer, into a blissful mess, until she suddenly put her hands to his chest and said, “Wait!” Tommy cursed under his breath but kept fucking her.

“What?”

“I forgot a condom!”

“I’ll fucking pull out,” Tommy said and fucked her harder, deeper, making the sensations even better, to the point that Madison was coming on his cock, gripping his shoulders tightly and gasping beneath him, her legs closing around his hips and her pussy tightening around his cock in a sensation that made him have to slow down before he came inside of her. When her orgasm was over, she swallowed and breathed beneath him, putting a hand to his chest.

“Don’t forget to pull out,” she murmured, of which he nodded.

“Yeah, yeah.” He pulled his cock out and slapped it against her pussy to get a break from the friction, and pushed it back inside of the cavern of tight muscles from her orgasm, making him groan and shut his eyes at the pleasing pressure. “ _Fuck_.” He rested for a moment, composing himself, and then started fucking her again, quickly and to the hilt, making the pins in his gut gather and stir for an orgasm. He breathed. “Oh, fuck..”

Nails dragged across his cheek lightly, ghosting, and he opened his eyes to look at Madison, but she was gone- a big shadow in her place, blurry and fuzzy, and making his head hurt. Red eyes looked at him and he jumped back.

“What the fuck?”

“What?” Madison asked, standing in front of him on the grass, while he knelt on the merry-go-round. She was fixing her clothes, snapping her panties back into place. Tommy looked down at the merry-go-round, at himself, but all that was there were drops of cum. “Yeah, you came inside,” Madison said, “But I’ll just get a day-after pill. I’m on birth control, too.”

“But...”

“It’s fine, but for now on, it’s condoms or no sex.” The girl bent over to kiss Tommy’s cheek, and then pointed off towards her house. “I’m gonna go home, it’s like, eleven.”

Tommy nodded, though he didn’t know if he was really listening.

“Well, see ya.”

“...See ya.”

Madison started walking off, and Tommy climbed off of the ride, since he had apparently already tucked himself away. “What the fuck,” he muttered to himself and looked around at the park, but it was completely empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my birthday's on the 2nd, and I wanted to get this out because it's my baby, despite how many times I wanted to run it over with a semi for having to rewrite it so many times (file kept corrupting beyond any technological repair).
> 
> So if you liked, leave kudos, bookmark, subscribe, comment, thanks. (It'd also help what's gonna be a not very happy birthday, so thanks ;p )
> 
> Also, sorry for the probably shitty porn, I don't write straight and didn't beta.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy learns that personal wounds can hurt everyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished chapter two, yay. My internet's out and I've taken in a sick dog, so paychecks are going to vet checks first and then I'll work on internet access, yada yada.

**Chapter Two**

  


In the morning, Tommy got up at nine for a shower, because he smelled like sex and sweat from last night. He didn’t know what time Toni had gotten home, but she was laying in bed on her phone when he stopped by to look.

“What’d you do last night?” he asked his sister, walking through her room and picking things up to look at for less than a second before putting them back down. She shrugged from her bed.

“Movies, pedis.”

“Bull-fucking-shit. What else?”

“Well, I’m not telling you with that attitude. What’d _you_ do?”

Tommy looked at Toni. “What?” he asked. His sister shrugged again, slowly.

“I was gonna talk to you but you were out. So, don’t patronize _me_ , hypocrite.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Alright, fine. What’d you need?”

“Last night? Nothing, I was just gonna tell you something, but I don’t want to anymore.”

Tommy laughed, though it wasn’t of humor, and came over to sit on her bed, his hair wet and dripping because he never did like using towels. “What was it?”

Toni watched her brother, skeptically, for a minute before breaking into a smile and getting up onto her knees on her bed to pull up her shirt. On her right hip, was a fresh tattoo, circled in red irritation and shiny with moisturizer. Tommy was struck.

“Toni, what the fuck?”

Toni’s mouth fell open and she dropped her shirt. “What?”

“You got a fucking tattoo, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Hey, you got one and you were younger than me! Don’t be an ass!”

“Well mine was fucking _good_! What the hell is that?”

“It’s a fucking heart; you got a fucking _pinup girl_!”

Tommy climbed off of Toni’s bed. “Ugh, I can’t believe you. Jesus fucking christ, Toni, really?” He looked at her, looked at her stomach of where the tattoo was covered. “That thing’s permanent!”

“I _know_ , Tommy, I’m not dumb. Get out of my room, go to work,” the girl said frustratingly, and Tommy didn’t need to be told twice. He left out of his sister’s room downstairs, where he grabbed his left over BLT and left walking to work, because Dustin was out catching the food banks.

At work as a mechanic’s apprentice, Tommy welded together some split metal for a cover that Rusty, his boss and mentor, needed. And, as much as it would probably bother or annoy Toni, he wasn’t thinking about her and her tattoo at all. Behind his mask with sparks flying, he was thinking of the things that the Raven had said.

“ _His friend drank too much, ate too much, fell asleep at his feet. Wanted help but didn’t receive, not by James Parker; he stood and watched the vomit slip through their teeth. Didn’t call for help, didn’t call for help until their body never felt.”_

What did that even mean? And that was only the first part. It was the second that could turn heads.

“ _James had a friend ask for help, but not the help of surviving, for the help of depriving.”_

No matter his hatred for James, Tommy could best assume that it wasn’t murder. Or, a planned murder. Had James helped someone die? _“Drank too much, ate too much, fell asleep at his feet”_. Maybe whoever had… died, had eaten pills. The coward’s way out. Maybe they had OD’d and asked James not to call 911. If that was the case, then it was an assisted suicide.

Who was it, though? Who had died? The school would have let all of the kids know about a death, but Tommy hadn’t heard anything.

He was sick of these riddle-type things. That stupid raven-

Something clattered overhead in the metal shop, shocking Tommy out of his thoughts and into looking up, where he saw a little black bird knocking itself into some tools on a hanging rack. Tommy took off his welding mask to see without the darkened shade, though only quick enough to see a wrench falling towards him. He dropped the welding rod to catch the tool but the rod rolled and a sudden burst of burning pain seized his whole left arm, making him cry out loudly in pain.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Tommy said, glaring down at his arm that Rusty washed under cold water. But, he did. The pain was an electric shock that traveled up his arm and down his spine with each brush of the water, his skin becoming hypersensitive to the burn that marred his flesh. It was a second degree burn, he could tell. The flesh was swollen and bright pink verging on white. Tommy seethed through his gritted teeth and leaned over the sink, groaning from his throat. Rusty looked at him.

“It doesn’t matter if you have the money or not, you need to go to the hospital. You need to get it looked at,” he said, holding Tommy’s arm underneath the water, keeping the burn under some level of temperature to keep the pain down. It helped, but the pressure of the water over the burn gave a different type of pain, and Tommy wiped his clammy forehead with his other hand in agitation.

“I’m not going, just call someone for some medicine of something- ah, _fuck_.” Tommy kicked the ground, looking at Rusty when he didn’t move to do anything. “Go fucking call someone,” he said, urgently, as the pain made him want to claw his arm off. Rusty sighed through his nose and let go of Tommy’s arm, turning and leaving him get the office’s phone. Tommy swallowed and closed his eyes.

“ _He feeds the lies and eats the truths-”_

“ _To go to sleep and never wake, to jump the cliff with no mistake-”_

“Leave me alone,” Tommy muttered, as the raven’s previous stories of James swirled in his throbbing head, echoing over each other like a crowd.

“ _Takes to the shop with a sleight of hand-”_

“ _Dreams of toys the gender of boys-”_

Tommy breathed in and out, the wound sending chills over his body into a cold sweat that made him feel like he were high on a bad trip. “Shut up.”

“ _Cross a line through the F-”_

“ _Echoes in the night like a woman-”_

“Fuck, shut _up_ ,” James seethed, opening his eyes to see the mirror but seeing more than his reflection, in a way that made his heart skip. White hands rested on his shoulders, with too long of black nails that raked against his shirt.

“Parker,” the raven whispered into his ear, though its shape was hidden behind his own form, “Wishes to long for his father, but all thoughts of kindness are empty.”

Tommy stared at the reflection, his own being pale and clammy. “...What does that mean,” he asked, despite himself. The hands slowly dragged across his shoulders to his neck, cupping and feeling the skin with a cold aura that soaked through his epidermis. One stopped there, but the other moved up to his face, resting against his cheek.

“His father is lost to him, both in body and in mind.”

“Tell me something else,” James said, again without realizing, as if he were in a trance. He felt like he was in one, because the pain in his arm had subsided to a numb feeling.

The raven caressed his cheek, its long nails scraping against his flesh with such delicacy that it was like sketching on paper. “James Parker is out now, about and searching, for what… you’ll see. If you go now, beneath the tree...”

“What tree?”

“Quoth the-”

“Wait, wait-”

“Raven.”

“Tommy,” Rusty said, making Tommy look at him from the sink and mirror. Tommy looked back, but the hands were gone; the raven was gone. He pressed his lips together and looked at Rusty again, who came in with a sack and an expression. “Are you okay? You look like-”

“’m fine. ...What is it?”

“I called Pratt downtown, said he had some stuff for you. Go ahead and pull your arm out so we can dry it off.”

Tommy took his arm out from the water and Rusty dried it with a clean mechanic’s rag, bringing all of the seething, burning, electrifying pain right back. Tommy cursed, and moaned and groaned under his breath as the rag came into contact with the burn that would probably take weeks to heal.

“God-fucking-dammit, Rusty!”

“You’re doing alright, now hold on.” Rusty put the rag away and reached into the sack to get a tube of cream and some pills. “You’re lucky it’s not a third degree or we’d both be in trouble.” The thought of that didn’t mind Tommy; he had experienced a third degree burn before, and he didn’t want to ever again. Charred black, dead flesh, surrounding a white, pussy wound that he had to get scraped regularly at the doctor’s office by a sponge. No, he didn’t want to experience that again. But, having this burn made him hate getting hurt again at all.

Rusty had Tommy take the pills while he himself applied the ointment to the wound, before applying gauze and a wrap. “I called your mom,” Rusty said, “She’s coming to pick you up.”

“No she’s not,” Tommy mumbled, slipping by Rusty to take a seat on the toilet to rest. “I’ll call a friend to pick me up, don’t make my mom come.”

“Why not? You need to go home-”

“Yeah, but not Mom, alright? She’s busy enough as it fucking is. I’ll call a friend or something.”

Rusty watched Tommy for a minute before shaking his head and leaving him alone. Tommy took the time to just rest by himself and try to work through the pain of the wound. What a shitty day.

“ _Beneath the tree.”_

What was James doing? Where?

Tommy, after a few minutes, pulled his phone out of his pocket to call for a ride, but changed his mind, though he really shouldn’t have. He got up from the toilet and left the bathroom to Rusty, whom took a phone call in the office. The teen got his attention and pointed off.

“I called my friend, he’s here,” he said. Rusty nodded and spoke into the phone, and Tommy turned to leave out of the shop through the open draw doors. He started walking, anywhere, down the street with a throbbing arm from the heat of the summer outdoors that warmed up the burn. He walked a while, almost getting his phone out to make a real call now, yet noticing a bird in the sky and pausing.

The raven. It cawed and flapped its wings, flying ahead. Tommy sucked up the pain and the drowsiness of whatever medicine Rusty had given him, and followed after it.

It flew the only thing in the whole blue sky- just a black bird flapping its wings in the middle of summer. The only raven that Tommy had seen in the whole town. Ever.

He followed it, the heat of the outdoors stinging his wound and making his arm seize in pain and a hot directness of a searing heat, making his forehead bead with sweat and his head throb with an oncoming migraine.

The bird led him to the park, the same park that he had been to the night before with Madison. When he thought that he’d lost the bird due to his ill body, he just barely caught a glimpse of it disappearing into the branches and leaves of a tree that stood near a dirt racing track for school track-meets. Though, as Tommy approached the tree, it was more than evident that there was no one there. No James.

“What the fuck..,” he muttered to himself, because he had walked all this way in the heat for nothing. It felt like his head was swirling. “You lied,” he said, though he didn’t really mean to. There was the sound of flapping in the tree, and then he heard grass rustling and looked down at the ground, where, at the base of the tree’s roots, were white hands sticking out of the grass and dirt and cupping handfulls of brown glass shards, from a broken beer bottle. The shards fell from between the Raven’s trembling fingers, into the grass below, in a way that was almost mesmerizing. Then, it closed its hands around the shards, the glass crunching in the white palms and making black blood leak from them.

It brought one finger up, pointing its long black nail into a direction that, when Tommy looked, was the park bathroom. It was like something else overcame Tommy, because he turned and started walking off to the white painted brick restroom, of which he and his friends had had their fair share of vandalizing during their days.

He walked up to the bathroom, stepping onto the cement flooring and in front of the “men’s” blue door, that the city unlocked for the summer. But when Tommy tried pushing the door open, it didn’t budge.

Inside, he could barely hear the despicable sound of crying that made a part of his brain want to laugh. It sounded like a girl but it was a boy’s voice. He knew because he knew what James’s crying sounded like.

From inside, he could hear something like, “I waited for you,” like it were a phone call, because there wasn’t anything else to follow it. Until James spoke again with, “You said you’d come see me”.

He was probably cutting himself. Where, Tommy didn’t know, because there weren’t any cuts or scars on the noirette’s arms or torso when his shirt had been stripped at school.

He was a cutter, as the raven had led Tommy to understand. Self conscious about his weight and cutting himself like it’d make him thinner. What an idiot. What an undeniably despicable idiot, who somehow managed to have everyone fooled. He was just as much of a lie as what he led people to believe. His smiles and laughter, Tommy knew they were fake, how did no one else?

And was that all that the raven led Tommy here for? To know that James cuts himself with broken beer glass from the park? Was that really it?

“You fucking bitch,” he laughed, lowly, bitterly- sparingly, with a shaking of his head. All this way for a pointless thing like that? He wanted something else. He wanted something that would make James rot in hell. He laughed again and leaned against the door with his shoulder.

What a pointless thing. And to add to the disappointment, he couldn’t even see James’s face. He could only hear him crying over the phone to someone like a pussy. Though, who was it?

“ _...late night escapades with Connor, the only who could make James a runner.”_

The twenty something year old James had been fucking? Tommy laughed to himself again, closing his eyes and breathing heavily at the throbbing in his wounded arm that hung at his side. Of course it is; there are only so many fags in the world, why not recycle them.

There was some nagging feeling in the back of Tommy’s head, but he didn’t open his eyes to figure out what it was. Didn’t try. He put his hand on the bathroom door and pushed against it again, but it was firmly shut and didn’t make a single sound. Aside from James crying inside.

Who was he talking to? Who else had seen his hidden, true self? Had they seen it first, before Tommy? Had Tommy been late to his own party?

He was starting to get delusional from the pain and the outside heat, and the nagging feeling just got heavier. What the hell was it?

He didn’t bother. He put more weight against the door.

Was James cutting himself inside? Hiding from the public eye? Where, where did he hide the scars? His thighs? Shins? Feet? Where did he hide them?

The door didn’t budge.

He pushed harder and opened his eyes, but when he did, he didn’t see the outdoor scenery. It was a bedroom, and though it wasn’t his own, he did recognize it. It was Stuart’s, and by the flat, hard feeling underneath him, he was laying on the floor.

He had passed out. When, he didn’t know, because the bedroom was darkened by the night sky that showed through Stuart’s bedroom window.

Tommy sat up on the blankets that he had been laying on and got out his phone for light, the dim screen letting him see somewhat, the form of Stuart laying on his own bed. Asleep or not was the question, because he could only see his friend’s back.

“Stuart,” he said while putting his phone down, and he could hear the creak of his friend’s mattress as the teen rolled over.

“Hm?” Stuart sounded.

“What happened?”

“Oh, I saw you tripping at the park so I brought you here. You fell asleep fast.”

Tommy didn’t remember that, but why would he? He’d been under the influence- from Rusty or the raven, he didn’t know.

“What’d you do to your arm?” Stuart asked. Tommy breathed.

“Burnt it at work. What are you doing just laying there awake? Weird much?”

Stuart chuckled. “Dude, check out this girl I’m sexting.” There was a flash of light and a thunk against Tommy’s side. He felt around until he found Stuart’s phone and decided to look at it. There was a girl, but Tommy knew that she wasn’t their age. He threw the phone back.

“You’re under investigation, knock it off.”

“Hey, she hit me up first. Name’s Ida, or something.”

The name hit Tommy, but he couldn’t exactly place it. He lay silent for a second, trying to place the name to the face of the girl on Stuart’s phone, and it eventually hit him when he came back to James’s green eyes.

Ida Parker, James’s younger sister. Tommy didn’t know much about her, just that she and James didn’t get a long at all. Or rather, she was a kid bitch.

“I’m gonna get some medicine,” Tommy said, to no reply from his friend, because Stuart was right back on his phone. The brunette got up from the floor and left the dark room to find the bathroom, knowing where it and every other room of the house was from being a town native; and being Stuart’s friend for an uncomfortable amount of years.

He made his way to the bathroom and flicked the light on, squinting and putting a hand over his eyes at the burning sensation of the lights against his sleepy eyes.

He started pulling open drawers and rummaging through them, through hair brushes and toothpaste, and razors. When he didn’t see any medicine there, he scavenged the rest of the room, but to no avail. There just wasn’t any kind of medicine.

He huffed and left the bathroom, shutting the light back off, and then going back to Stuart’s room. “Where’s your pain medicine,” he asked, a little loud from his agitation.

“My mom’s Romanian, we don’t have medicine,” Stuart said with a humor in his voice. Tommy walked over to sit on the bed beside him, his friend nudging him briefly in an attempt to push him off and out of his space.

“What about your fucking dad.”

“Come on, you know my mom. ‘Can’t even ask something before she’s on you. Probably more Romanian shit.”

“Well man, I need some fucking medicine. Now,” Tommy said sternly, stiffly, looking at his friend’s face, lit up from his phone screen. Stuart looked at him like he was going to say something dumb, but then he sighed and locked his phone.

“Alright, come on, I’ll drive you to the store.”

“Thanks.”

“Man, Evelyn should have picked you up, her dad has all kinds of opiods and shit.”

“I know. Come on, let’s just go. I’m fucking dying.”

Stuart waited for Tommy to get up before climbing out of his bed and walking Tommy out of the room and house to his dad’s car, because his dad was crazy enough to trust him with it.

They both got in and Stuart started driving Tommy to the nearest dollar store.

“Hey,” Tommy said, making his friend look at him. “Go by the park, just drive by it.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Stuart listened to his friend and drove down the park’s road, and Tommy looked out of the window at the bathroom, of which he could see a light turned on through a window at the top of the sidewall.

Was James really still in there?

Not only that, but was the car parked nearby Connor’s?

Stuart drove by the park to turn down a road and continue for the store. On the drive, he asked Tommy how he’d gotten the burn, really wanting to know the details because of the color that was started to peer through the bandages.

“Dropped my welding rod.”

Stuart laughed. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“’Heard your sister got a tat.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Tommy asked, giving Stuart a sideways glance that his friend knew all too well. Stuart rolled his eyes and scoffed under his breath.

“I’m not gonna fuck your fucking sister, alright? Jesus.”

“You’re fucking all the other kids in school- even with the cops up your ass.”

“Hey! Give me some fucking common respect, man, you make me out like some sort of fucking pervert, when you’re the one fucking three chicks a fucking day!”

“For god’s sake, shut the fuck up- at least they have fucking tits,” Tommy muttered, though it didn’t stop Stuart from hitting him angrily in his upper arm, making his wounded muscles hurt. He brought his arm up and hit his friend in return, with the same force that Stuart had used. They had gotten into fist fights of actual hatred and bitter annoyance twice before, and from the way Stuart looked away from the road at Tommy, they were probably going to end up again.

Stuart looked at Tommy briefly before looking at the road again, as if to make sure there were no cars sharing the pavement, and then turned his full attention to Tommy again to punch him, his fist connecting right with Tommy’s cheek and officially turning on the fight switch.

“You fucking-” Tommy shifted in his seat to grab Stuart by the shirt collar and sock him in the nose, something that made the car swerve, yet the two were too preoccupied. Stuart let go of the wheel to grab Tommy by the neck and that, was when the car lost it. The Hyundai tore off of the road as the teens wrestled each other and slid right into a ditch, though by some grace, that was all. It didn’t tumble or roll upside down, it simply sat nose first into the ditch, meaning that it wouldn’t come out without some sort of manual labor.

Tommy thrust Stuart against the driver’s door and seethed at him through an irritated eye and red cheek. Stuart had a bloody nose that dripped right into a split lip, and his shirt was stretched and rung out. “Fuck you,” he said through a bitterly angry expression that Stuart mirrored.

“Fuck you, you motherfucker. Tommy this, Tommy that- you piece of fucking-” Stuart lost himself again and lashed out to start striking Tommy again, who brought his hands up to fight his friend off.

“-get the fucking-”

“What?” Stuart asked bitterly, pausing when he saw that Tommy looked like he was actually trying to say something.

“Let’s get the car out of the fucking ditch,” Tommy said, shoving Stuart’s fists away. Stuart snorted blood up through his nose and turned away from Tommy to start climbing out of the car, leaving the door open in his angry frustration and spitting out the blood into the grass of the ditch. Tommy got out of his side too, and tripped on the steepness of the ditch, catching himself on a handful of sharp, dead grass.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Stuart exclaimed loudly, looking up at the road. He started cursing and kicking the side of the car, and Tommy watched him while wiping at some blood on his shirt.

“Calm down.”

Stuart looked over the hood of the car at his friend. “Calm- Fucking calm down? Who the fuck are we gonna call to help us tow this shit out of here? It’s the fucking middle of the night!”

“We’ll fucking push it!” Tommy stared at his friend incredulously before shaking his head with a curse and climbing over the car to Tommy’s side. “I’m gonna put it in reverse and we’re just gonna push it.”

Stuart gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, push it all the way up there?”

“We’re gonna have to try, now aren’t we?” Tommy looked at his friend before stepping around him and leaning into the car to set it in reverse. Then the two started pushing it, though it took a solid two minutes for it to budge from the angle. They were already panting out of breath.

“Keep pushing,” Tommy grunted, and they managed to roll it back a few more paces until a sudden bird caw made them both jump, and the car scooted back towards them. Stuart looked around before finding the bird and glaring.

“Fucking crow.”

Tommy followed his gaze to see the raven, perched on a branch and watching them, with its red eyes. More specifically, watching Tommy. “It’s a raven,” he said and went back to pushing the car. Stuart looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing, just push.”

Stuart shook his head again and the two started pushing.

It took thirty minutes to get the car back up the hill. Once they did, Stuart attacked Tommy again with the rest of his pent up anger and they fell tumbling into the ditch with dead grass stabbing and poking them, and sharp sandburs sticking in their clothes and arms. The pain in Tommy’s arm had turned so unbearable that he wanted to scratch the wound off, but that was virtually impossible, but it had become so wet with blood and other fluids that the bandages were just tossed away after he and Stuart’s tussle. Which left Tommy laying in the ditch clutching his arm, dirt and grass sticking to the wound and an itching burn traveling up to his shoulder. Stuart stood beside him, fresh blood pouring from his nose as he watched his friend writhe.

“You fucking-” Tommy couldn’t even speak. He gave out loud cries of anguish and kicked at his friend when Stuart decided to help him up, because Stuart had actually been the one to start up the pain in the first place. He’d climbed on top of Tommy and held his arms down with his knees to punch him, and it was that pressure that made the wound open up again.

“I’m fucking sorry, alright?” Stuart spoke through a stuffed up nose full of congested blood, but Tommy was in too much of pain to care. He fought Stuart as his friend pulled him up to his feet and helped/made him climb back up the ditch to the car.

Once they got inside, Stuart had to drive longer to a Walgreen’s because the dollar store was closed, and they went to the bathroom to start washing the wound off, and to clean up. Stuart bought the stuff; gauze, medical tape, a burn cream suggested by the cashier, of whom had no clue what was going on.

The burn was yellow and bleeding, and Tommy almost knocked Stuart out when his friend started plucking the grass off that was stuck. Then, once it was as clean as they could get it, they went out to the car to start bandaging it up again, but Stuart had to go back inside for pain medicine.

When it was all done and over with, Stuart drove Tommy back to his house and helped him back to his bedroom so that he could chill out on his makeshift bed; the floor. Tommy passed out like a bird in a box, but when he woke up to his phone ringing, he felt like he hadn’t slept at all.

Dustin calling at seven in the morning, waking up both Tommy and Stuart, the latter groaning and rolling in bed to catch more Z’s because he also wasn’t in the mood to get up, with his beaten up face.

Tommy answered the phone but was too tired to say anything and even fell asleep again, his phone slipping in his fingers. It took Dustin saying his name a few times to make him acknowledge her.

“Where are you?” his mom asked, sounding awake and ready for whatever the day held. Tommy just wanted to sleep. He felt like he got hit by a truck, his body felt like it was made of a ton of bricks, and it was Sunday for gods sake.

“Tommy,” she said again when he dozed off, “Hello?”

“Stuart’s,” Tommy finally replied.

“Rusty said you got hurt and you didn’t come home, and you’re at Stuart’s? Tommy, what’s wrong with you? Get home right now. You hear me?”

“Mm.”

“Tommy William, get your ass home right fucking now.”

“It’s Sunday,” Tommy uttered, trying to rub the sleepiness from his eyes because she sounded like she meant it. Though, she couldn’t possibly do anything to “correct” him. “Why?”

“Because you were gone all fucking day hopped on Pratt’s opiods, Rusty told me,” Dustin said slowly, each word cutting through glass with a bitterness of seething. “Get. Home.” With that, his mother hung up first. Tommy put his phone down and tried to go back to sleep for a few more minutes, but he knew that he should probably get up before Stuart’s mom did.

“Stu, get up,” he said, pushing himself to sit up despite further sleep gnawing at him. Stuart rose a hand to wave him off and Tommy sucked his teeth. “Drive me home, man, Dustin’s pissed.”

“Drive yourself.”

“Fucking get up.” Tommy sat up himself, though his body felt like he could barely do it. He sat there for a second, waiting for Stuart to get up too, and made his friend help him up when he was out of bed. The two left the bedroom down a short staircase and went out to the car, that had sand burrs laced in the tires from when they went down the ditch. Birds were just staring to wake up and chirp on account of how early it was- how early Dustin had woken Tommy up to force home. There was dried blood inside the car too, from their fighting.

Stuart drove Tommy home, sniffing through his stuffed up nose of crusty blood and clearing his throat. The only sounds in the silent car, because the whole town was just as silent. It was Sunday, so everyone who cared was getting dressed and ready for church. Or making Sunday breakfast. Or sleeping in.

No one was outside but Tommy and Stuart and the chirping birds.

And James. James Parker, who walked along the side of the road on a chilly summer morning, who watched the car go by as he continued walking passed. Not a smile or a wave. He watched Tommy’s face go by, not offering him the slightest tell tale sign that he was happy. Why would he be, seeing Tommy? Though, it did kind of piss Tommy off.

Stuart dropped Tommy off and as soon as he walked through the front door, Dustin was in his face. Like she’d been waiting on the other side of the door for him, but was more likely going to grab something from her car. Or the newspaper. Or whatever. She wasn’t happy seeing her kid’s face on the other side of the door, though.

“Where the fuck were you?” she asked, her lips pulled tight and her jaw clenched. Looked like she was gonna have an aneurysm.

“Stuart’s,” Tommy unintentionally slurred. He was exhausted.

“No, where were you? You and Stuart together all day? No, what did you do?”

“Nothing.” He didn’t really know what she was getting at, and he didn’t like how confused he probably looked. “I didn’t do any drugs, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh my god, I have the greatest fucking son, he didn’t do any drugs for once. Did you torch the fucking shop?”

Tommy only grew more confused. “...What? Rusty’s?”

“Mel’s shop, did you torch it? I swear to God, Tommy, if you go to fucking jail-”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Someone set Mel’s shop on fire last night and everyone thinks it’s you,” Toni sounded from the stairs, and Tommy glanced over to see her standing in her pajamas, watching the two. He looked back at Dustin.

“I didn’t go anywhere near there,” he said. “I left Rusty’s and Stuart took me to his place.”

“And you were there all night? Bullshit,” Dustin spat. The look on her face was of such disappointment and disgust that Tommy got tired of being to blame. He flung his bandaged arm up to show it to his mother.

“Stuart took me to get some fucking pain meds for this shit and we got into a fight- we were stuck getting his car out of a ditch for half an hour and we passed out when we got back to his fucking house. Rusty hopped me too much to do it before, and I was too fucking exhausted to later. I didn’t set that fucking place on fire,” he said, bitterness flowing in his voice. “I didn’t fucking do it.”

Dustin’s face didn’t soften, but she did turn away from her son to walk passed Toni upstairs, where it could best be assumed that she was going to her bedroom. Once the sound of a door closing sounded in the quiet house, Toni slowly came downstairs to walk over to her brother. She looked up at him with big round eyes.

“...You need to stop getting hurt,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s always worried about you.”

“Tch. Like-”

“She is, Tommy. And so am I. I mean, jesus, look in the mirror! You look like someone tried to kill you. ...Just be careful.”

Tommy wanted to tell his sister off, but she looked like she were really concerned, and he didn’t want to make the sensitive kid cry. He just pat her head and pushed her away. “Okay, I’ll be good. I’m not a real fucking bad guy.”

Toni smiled and it looked like she was gonna cry anyway. “...I’m gonna go...” Whatever she was gonna say she was gonna do, she just turned and headed upstairs too, to her own room. To cry, most likely. Tommy puffed and stood around for a while before deciding that he owed Dustin an apology. As much as he deserved one in return. He went up to Dustin’s room and opened the door to go inside when he decided that standing outside her door wasn’t gonna do anything.

Though her back was to him, he could hear his mother crying; laying in bed with the blanket up to her ears. She always tucked her feet into the blanket and covered her ears. She’d always tuck them in like that when they were kids, too.

“...Mom,” Tommy said, standing at the doorway. He waited for a reply, but she didn’t give one. She just sniffled and curled up further beneath the blanket. His eyes strayed away from her cocoon to the rest of the room, where there were approaching bills hanging on a tack board. He looked at Dustin again before leaving the room to Toni’s, where he opened the door to catch her teary eyed, sitting on her bed and hugging her legs to her chest. She looked at him and decided to slip off of the bed to go over and hug her brother, who put an arm around her and walked her into Dustin’s room. When they were inside, Tommy walked over to the bed and climbed onto it beside his mother, and Toni climbed in on the other side of him. She hugged him and started crying, putting two different kinds in both ears. Toni’s soft sobs, and Dustin’s quiet sniffling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and if you liked it, thanks. If you didn't, let me know.  
> Kudos/comments help authors too, so..


	3. Poem of a Raven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little something until the next chapter update.

I watch you while you sleep, baring eyes into your window. You sleep but you don't dream, never have and never will, but it is I here, who give you time to kill.

I stare on at that boy, the boy you pay most attention, and I bring it all back to you, to garner your affection. I tell you all of his secrets, life and deaths galore, and you tell me yours, though you know not- more and more.

I wake you up, pester pester pester, just to see the fire in you as it starts to fester.

You knew me not, just a Raven; no more. Now you dream only me, as I start to sink into your soul.

Quoth the Raven,   
Nevermore.

 


End file.
